Soft Machine

I love the first two, but I struggle with this band from there. I guess I'm a Wyatt fan. :)

I love the Softs!

My favourite albums from those I know (from Third up to Seven) are Third and Six.

The first couple of minutes from Six's "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album" remind me of "Esther's Nose Job" from Volume Two.

AZF wrote: The first couple of minutes from Six's "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album" remind me of "Esther's Nose Job" from Volume Two. Only played on a piano instead of organ and fuzz bass. (Although Mike's fuzz organ comes in before it gets going)

Right you are - Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue is a manic Fuzz-Organ fest, and also Chloe And The Pirates is beautiful. Maybe even Hopper's darkly avant 1983. But the live portion is performed in a somewhat too generic jazz-rock mode without much passion and personality. It does have some sparkle here and there, but, for me, this is on-par with the final Cockayne album.

The Fifth album is BRILLIANT...........

Hi 

lady_rachel wrote: Hi  I don't know if its appropriate posting here, but I need help I might sound stupid but It's been years that I'm obsessed with Soft Machine and the whole Canterbury scene and  I'm about to make a trip to Europe. Since the city is only one-two hours from London, I have this idea of actually visiting Caterbury. I know obviously that is a loose term and doesnt reffer specifically only to the bands from Kent but It still strange cause doesn't seem to exist any kind of structure dedicated to what happened, musically, there. I can't even locate the prog fans community there. I don't know if its me not looking effectively or people in Canterbury that simply just don't care

Years ago, when National Health's stuff was first released on CD (1990 or so), my friend and I wrote a fan letter to Dave Stewart, inspired by the note in the booklet giving a mailing address and the assurance that "we answer all letters".  Sure enough, I got a nice two-page handwritten letter (in wonderful penmanship too, I might add), and in response to my fanciful comment that I might like to visit Canterbury sometime, he actually gave me Richard Sinclair's contact information.  I never ended up using that information, and it's questionable whether the info is still correct 25 years later, but my point is, Dave S may be someone you could feel comfortable locating and asking for leads/contacts/advice/whatever.  I was very impressed by the friendliness of his reply.

Toaster Mantis wrote: I might one of these days attempt to read the novel they're named after. How many references to Wm. Burroughs' literary oeuvre are there in their lyrics? I heard the band also has quite a few songs inspired by Thomas Pynchon.

I think the "mentions" are not as important as we think.  But there is a "parallel", as I like to call it, in that they way the written work went was a similar thing they were hoping to achieve in the music.

Today, this is a "lost art", because many of us think that "lyrics" are enough and the reality is not. By the time you check this stuff, and read a portion of Robert Wyatt's book (so far it is excellet -- I'm up to 75 pages already!!!!), you realize the inspiration, but we do not see that as "possible" because we think that music is music and literature and art and movies is sh*t, and does not relate to anything music. There is a "parallel", but it's connection is difficult to discuss, and sometimes a mention like this makes it look/sound silly, and in fact it is not ... the composition, in the early Soft machine days, and going back to Daevid Allen days, was very "beat poet" style and open and free form ... and this is not something that is always "composed" or made into a "song" ... nowadays, the stupid part, is that everything has to be a song ... and check out how many threads are about songs ... not the process! Just take a quick look at the name of Robert's book! You think that's not true? ... but many musicians will freak on that!

This is one of my favorite discussions, and something that I spend a lot of time discussing, but there is a side of it that is "invisible" for us to make a connection, but we need an open mind to work with it, and as is the case most often here ... very few of us are actually "experienced" ... enough, to discuss this. I spend a lot of time linking these up to film and theater, since these are both a "stage" ... and there are times when there are similar things in them ... altough if there is a group that is absolutely the worst at discussing these things and feign ignorance, it is those that do rock music, even when they are being stuck up on the girls and nothing else but as an excuse to do what they do!

I can guarantee you that Pynchon and Burroughs were not about that a whole lot, and in many ways i still see them as folks that made fun and trashed that egocentric thing senseless.

Edited by moshkito - February 27 2015 at 11:33

The Peel Sessions came up in my random rotation today.

First 3 are my favorites......the later ones, while good albums,  went into a jazz fusion direction and lost all that early Canterbury  feel and whimsy.